Coronavirus: Hong Kong logs 5,020 cases, most in more than 4 months, while minister ‘encouraged’ by number of parents booking Sinovac shots for children
- Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung says she believes more people will sign their young children up for jabs in the coming days
- Authorities have lowered the age threshold for the Chinese-made Sinovac shot to children as young as six months
Health officials confirmed 5,020 new cases on Thursday, the most since 5,823 were recorded on April 1, and reported three more deaths related to the virus. Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, the head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable diseases branch, warned infections were expected to keep rising, pointing to a measure of the ability of the virus to spread.
“It has not peaked yet. University of Hong Kong researchers have put the latest effective reproductive rate of the virus at 1.28,” she said, referring to the estimated number of people each infected patient could pass the pathogen onto.
Chuang added the government would closely monitor the situation but refrain from tightening social-distancing rules for now.
Increasing vaccination coverage remains the government’s chief strategy for avoiding a repeat of the explosion of cases that overwhelmed hospitals in March, and it has been steadily lowering the eligibility age for the two types of Covid-19 shots available in the city, with the Chinese-made Sinovac jabs now offered to those as young as six months.
About 150 bookings were made by parents in the first half-hour that appointments for the extended scheme became available at 9am on Thursday, a number that Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan said bode well for the fight against the virus.
“I am quite encouraged by parents’ response today, since it’s the first day of the opening of the booking system,” she said. “I believe in the days to come, there will be more parents arranging vaccination for their children.”
As of 6pm, 219 children under the age of three had been inoculated, while 739 bookings had been made. While some parents said they remained worried about possible side effects of the jabs, they were also alarmed by the death of an infant earlier this week.
“I was worried about my child after watching news of the death of a 22-month-old infant,” said one mother who had taken her three-year-old boy to be inoculated at May Nga Nursery in To Kwa Wan. “It’s necessary to protect my boy, so we came as soon as the government lowered the age limit.”
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Principal Lo Siu-yin said the nursery had reached out to 20 parents with children who were eligible for the jabs under the lowered age threshold, and half of them accepted the invitation.
In addition to outreach programmes such as the one the nursery was offering, parents can make appointments for Sinovac shots at community centres or the Hospital Authority’s outpatient clinics on a government website. They can also opt for vaccination at more than 1,000 private doctors or clinics. The other Covid-19 vaccine offered in Hong Kong, the German-made BioNTech, is only available to children five and older.
Minister Yeung said it was “painful” to see the increasing number of Covid-19 cases among children since the fifth wave emerged earlier this year. Two infected patients under the age of three have died, including the toddler on Monday, while hospitals are treating 36 confirmed cases in the same age group. Six coronavirus-related deaths of children aged three to eleven have also been recorded, while 35 patients in this demographic are still in hospital.
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At the Java Road Sports Centre in North Point, a working mother in her thirties, had brought her 6½-month-old baby for a jab before their flight to Canada. “Young children suffer a lot if they get infected, hence I want my baby to be protected,” she said.
Despite BioNTech and America’s Moderna vaccines being available for young children in Canada, Tse said she believed Sinovac was a safer option. “Sinovac seemed to have less side effects on young children, therefore I chose to have her vaccinated in Hong Kong,” she said.
Dr Alan So King-woon, co-chairman of the Hospital Authority’s coordinating committee on paediatrics, noted three infected children had required intensive care at public hospitals in the past two weeks, and he urged parents to vaccinate their young ones as soon as possible.
As children aged below three were previously not eligible for Covid-19 inoculation, their risks of developing severe conditions from infection were much higher, he warned, adding their health could deteriorate in a few hours even under medical treatment.
Infected children should be sent to the hospital if they developed a high fever, appeared dazed or suffered from laboured breathing, So advised.
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Elsewhere in the city, the authority said four patients at a tuberculosis and chest department at Wong Tai Sin Hospital tested positive for Covid-19 after a family visited a 94-year-old patient.
The elderly man was among four hospital patients who tested positive for the coronavirus and died, but the authority said it could not be certain the small cluster was tied to the family visit.
Separately, fire services chief Andy Yeung Yan-kin and political assistant to the secretary for financial services and the treasury Julian Ip Chun-lim tested positive for the virus.
The city’s Covid-19 tally stands at 1,367,684 cases, with 9,520 fatalities related to the virus.
Additional reporting by Victor Ting
